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10 Questions To Help Ensure That You Are Hiring A Professional DJ!

1. How many years experience do you have?It is very important to find out how many years of experience your DJ has prior to hiring them. Many large companies boast about being in business for many years, but their DJs may only have limited experience.2. Will I get to speak to or meet my DJ before my event?I have seen it many times with larger Mobile DJ Companies, the clients do not get to meet or even speak to their DJ until the day of the event. You should always be able to speak to your DJ prior to your event to determine if their personality and level of professionalism meets your expectations.3. Do you have a back-up sound system?Your at your event, everyone is dancing then POP, your DJ blows a speaker and they don’t have a back-up. This is one rookie mistake that can ruin your special event. Any truly professional DJ will have a full back-up system on hand to make sure that the music can keep on playing.4. Can you provide references or testimonials?Any well experienced DJ should have the testimonials of his or her previous customers to attest to their service and professionalism. Don’t be afraid to ask and check them out.5. Do you have insurance?Why would your DJ need insurance? Well if you or any of your guests should sustain any type of injury that was proven to be the fault or your DJ or your DJ’s equipment, the DJ’s insurance should help take care of any incurred medical expences. A truly professional DJ is always prepared and will carry liablity insurance in case an unfortunate event such as this occurs. Don’t be afraid to ask for a copy of the DJ’s policy.6. What type of equipment do you have?You don’t need to know a lot about audio equipment to know if your DJ has a professional set up. A professional DJ set up should have at least 2 quality speakers, a mixer, and either a dual channel CD player, laptop with DJ software, or turntables. If your DJ only has an IPod and speakers, you should keep looking.7. Are you interactive and do you encourage participation?When most people hire a mobile DJ, they are looking for someone to entertain them and their guests. Anyone calling themselves a DJ can stand behind a table and play music, but a truly professional mobile DJ will know how to interact with the audience and show your guests a good time.8. Do you take requests?The answer should always be yes! The job of the DJ is to entertain you and your guests by playing the music that you want to hear, not just what the DJ wants to play.9. What type of music do you have and is it event appropriate?You hire a DJ for your middle school dance and the DJ plays an inappropriate song thinking that it was okay because the song was radio edited. This is another rookie DJ mistake! It is always the DJ’s responsibility to ensure that no inappropriate music is played while working an event. Even though a song may be radio edited, a DJ still must make sure that the content is appropriate for the event. No swear words doesn’t mean that the song is appropriate.10. How much do your services cost?Although this question is important, it should not be the main motivation for hiring a professional DJ. A professional DJ may charge anywhere from $100 to $200 an hour and sometimes more depending on the set up, level of experience and the amount of extras involved. If a DJ’s price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

As we delve further into the age of technology, more and more Mobile DJs are turning to playing digital versons of songs instead of CDs. For some reason, there is a big misconception that any DJ who uses digital songs instead of CDs will have poor sound quality. So I wanted to give you some of the facts about DJing with digital song formats in hopes that it will make you feel more at ease when your DJ says that he or she prefers digital.

So why do DJs prefer digital? Well it’s simple, you can fit a lot more music on an external hardrive than you can into a CD case and it’s a lot easier to carry too! When it comes to DJing it truly is all about the music. When going digital, you can bring 100,000 plus songs to every single event and feel confident that you are going to have the music that your clients and their guests want to hear. Also, it is much more efficient to type and search for song requests versus flipping through pages and pages of CDs for the right song.

What about sound quality? Well that’s a good question and I will try to answer without getting too technical. Not all digital downloads are created equal, the quality depends on the bitrate that they were downloaded in. When you put in a CD to copy a song or download a song, you can choose the bitrate (usually 128kbps, 196kbps, 256kbps or 320kbps). The higher the bitrate, the less compressed the song will be and the better it will sound. The only downside to this is that the file size will be larger which means you fit less songs on your hard drive or mp3 player. Most, if not all digital download sites for DJs offer songs in 320kbps which is the highest quality available. These songs are usually slightly more expensive, but any top notch DJ will not think twice about paying for quality. Songs that are in 128kbps are perfectly fine for listening in your car or on your mp3 player, but when amplified through a loudspeaker (like what DJs do) you can often hear tiny glitches in the song from being compressed.

So what does all of this technical mumbo jumbo mean? Well, a truly professional digital DJ should only use digital format songs that are of the highest qualityto ensure that they sound crisp and clear when amplified through their sound system. It is best if you ask questions about your potential DJ’s song library and make sure that they are only using the highest quality digital songs (320kbps) like we here at Project Groove DJs do! When your DJ has a high quality digital song library, then there is no need to fear the digital DJ!